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I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even e

I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even entertain the idea that anything other than “Texas is dumb” could have been a contributor. Even in this thread, the number of comments that adamantly insist “this is only a Texas problem”, despite facts to the contrary, is astounding. That goes the other way around, too (lots of conservatives immediately blaming windmills etc). It reminds me a lot of the Reddit posts whenever a bombing happens. You’ll see people from both sides rabidly hoping that it was a Muslim suicide bomber or a far-right extremist, because if that’s the case they can use the event to push their political agenda. It’s sickening, IMO. There surely is room here for criticizing Texas GOP policies, but they aren’t the only problem here, and if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago
> I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even entertain the idea that anything other than “Texas is dumb” could have been a contributor. In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force. > if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues. Some people actually do want to fix things on some level, but they are quite confident in their understanding of the problem and they believe that the indicated solution is clear, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either stupid, or evil, or both. So they’re unwilling to abandon what they see as a perfectly correct solution because a bunch of evil morons want to argue about “unintended consequences” or “agent-principal problems.” Other people are more interested in signaling their ideological alignment with the above, and the object level issue provides them with opportunities to signal.
- krapp 6y ago
  Don't swallow Rick Perry's horseshit about Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as intended, it was clearly a monumental failure. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal.
  - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
    > Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as planned, it was clearly a monumental failure. Authoritarian government also has failures that result in millions of deaths; I’m unsure how you can be so confident that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises. To be clear this isn’t about the object-level issue of preferring starvation under one ideology to starvation under another. This is about the inability of other people to comprehend that anyone could possibly feel differently than they do about who starves you to death. > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal but we still pay taxes.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal You sure about that?
      - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
        For certain values of ‘us’ ;)
    - mindslight 6y ago
      > that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails.
qqqwerty 6y ago
Just a reminder the your junior Senator (among many others[1]) mocked California and our electric grid when we were hit by record wild fires last year. He also voted against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy because it only impacted blue states. And maybe you should look up the timeline on when your state representatives ran to fox news and tried to blame the green new deal and windmills for the outage. I am sure the national discourse would be a bit more sane if it wasn't kicked off by Texas politicians spreading 100% FUD. You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people. [1] https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1361693012225650688 https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1361693012225650688
- txlpo78 6y ago
  Lol, this could not be a more perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. Nowhere in my comment did I say that Texas politicians are not to blame (in fact, I said the opposite) and yet here you come riding in to “remind me” of some actions that Texas politicians did that have absolutely no relevance to the issue at hand. > You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people. I don’t personally control Cruz or Abbott’s actions. If I did, they wouldn’t be in office. But what I can control is how I react to situations, just like you can control how you react to situations. I choose to be reasonable and expect others around me to be reasonable, because that’s how things progress. It seems you choose to double down on unproductive finger pointing and playing “gotcha”, though. That’s fine if you don’t like Cruz. I don’t like him either. But Cruz being a dumbass and taunting California has absolutely nothing to do with the issues that affected Texas this week, and you bringing it up is completely unneeded and unhelpful. Please go have your outrage session somewhere else.
  - qqqwerty 6y ago
    From your original post: > and if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues. One side takes these issues very seriously. We have been fighting tooth and nail to address climate change, improve the nations infrastructure and provide adequate safety nets for when things go bad. The other side spends their time screaming about socialism and stolen elections. The point I am trying to make is that this is not a "both sides" problem. One side is taking these issues very seriously the other refuses to even engage in a conversation about them. Obamacare is a perfect example of how this played out. The legislation literally originated as a Republican proposal, but Republicans refused to cooperate and instead trotted out the "death panels" talking point. And here we are 12 years later, and they still don't have a replacement plan. If you are actually interested in hearing about the solutions that are on the table you can get a rough idea by visiting Biden's energy plan[1]. These are very real proposals, with broad democratic support. But to get any of this stuff passed, it will likely require input and support from Republicans. And unfortunately, I have little to no faith that they will come to the table on this. I hope I am wrong. [1] https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/ https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/
Pxtl 6y ago
Well, considering the Texan senator who is currently planning his return from Cancun was involved in spreading lies that ultimately led to an attempted insurrection against the US government... I think people are a little sick of Texas politics right now, and Texas losing power on large scale for a major weather event for the 2nd time in four years is a nice reminder of the local attitudes about climate change and the failures of Texan libertarianism.

chordalkeyboard 6y ago

> I have been amazed, and also disappointed, by the amount of people that want this to be the fault of “stupid conservative Texas” and absolutely refuse to even entertain the idea that anything other than “Texas is dumb” could have been a contributor. In my opinion this is the result of a mentality that sees the government as the obvious solution to problems, so when you see problems existing in a place where people seem to have a different philosophy of government, its clearly the fault of those morons who don’t realize that all problems can be solved by sufficient application of government force. > if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues. Some people actually do want to fix things on some level, but they are quite confident in their understanding of the problem and they believe that the indicated solution is clear, and anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either stupid, or evil, or both. So they’re unwilling to abandon what they see as a perfectly correct solution because a bunch of evil morons want to argue about “unintended consequences” or “agent-principal problems.” Other people are more interested in signaling their ideological alignment with the above, and the object level issue provides them with opportunities to signal.

krapp 6y ago
Don't swallow Rick Perry's horseshit about Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as intended, it was clearly a monumental failure. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal.
- chordalkeyboard 6y ago
  > Texans preferring to go cold and starve than suffer the burden of regulation or government. This was not the philosophy of Texas governance succeeding as planned, it was clearly a monumental failure. Authoritarian government also has failures that result in millions of deaths; I’m unsure how you can be so confident that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises. To be clear this isn’t about the object-level issue of preferring starvation under one ideology to starvation under another. This is about the inability of other people to comprehend that anyone could possibly feel differently than they do about who starves you to death. > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a sociopathic libertarian ideal. None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal but we still pay taxes.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    > None of us are trying to die for the glory of a psychotic marxist ideal You sure about that?
    - chordalkeyboard 6y ago
      For certain values of ‘us’ ;)
  - mindslight 6y ago
    > that no one in Texas (of all places) would rather freeze to death than willingly accept the risk of being frozen to death by a tyrannical government that promises things then breaks promises These are the exact same pathology. You're drawing a distinction based on whether one is "government", but they're the same type of lethargic entrenched entity, regardless of how they were chartered. The actual problem is the lack of accountability. The free market philosophy points us to exit as an ideal of accountability. Sometimes exit works very well - switching electric providers during quiescent times to get pricing that better matches your usage. And sometimes relying on exit fails terribly, like this rare event where it is easier to balk at obligations rather than have prepared enough to fulfill them. If we care about exit in general, then it behooves us to recognize when it fails.

qqqwerty 6y ago

Just a reminder the your junior Senator (among many others[1]) mocked California and our electric grid when we were hit by record wild fires last year. He also voted against federal aid for Hurricane Sandy because it only impacted blue states. And maybe you should look up the timeline on when your state representatives ran to fox news and tried to blame the green new deal and windmills for the outage. I am sure the national discourse would be a bit more sane if it wasn't kicked off by Texas politicians spreading 100% FUD. You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people. [1] https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1361693012225650688 https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1361693012225650688

txlpo78 6y ago
Lol, this could not be a more perfect example of exactly what I’m talking about. Nowhere in my comment did I say that Texas politicians are not to blame (in fact, I said the opposite) and yet here you come riding in to “remind me” of some actions that Texas politicians did that have absolutely no relevance to the issue at hand. > You are asking everyone else to be reasonable while your own politicians viciously attack the other side and straight up lie to the American people. I don’t personally control Cruz or Abbott’s actions. If I did, they wouldn’t be in office. But what I can control is how I react to situations, just like you can control how you react to situations. I choose to be reasonable and expect others around me to be reasonable, because that’s how things progress. It seems you choose to double down on unproductive finger pointing and playing “gotcha”, though. That’s fine if you don’t like Cruz. I don’t like him either. But Cruz being a dumbass and taunting California has absolutely nothing to do with the issues that affected Texas this week, and you bringing it up is completely unneeded and unhelpful. Please go have your outrage session somewhere else.
- qqqwerty 6y ago
  From your original post: > and if we actually want to fix things we need to stop playing these ridiculous partisan games and be honest with ourselves with the full picture of issues. One side takes these issues very seriously. We have been fighting tooth and nail to address climate change, improve the nations infrastructure and provide adequate safety nets for when things go bad. The other side spends their time screaming about socialism and stolen elections. The point I am trying to make is that this is not a "both sides" problem. One side is taking these issues very seriously the other refuses to even engage in a conversation about them. Obamacare is a perfect example of how this played out. The legislation literally originated as a Republican proposal, but Republicans refused to cooperate and instead trotted out the "death panels" talking point. And here we are 12 years later, and they still don't have a replacement plan. If you are actually interested in hearing about the solutions that are on the table you can get a rough idea by visiting Biden's energy plan[1]. These are very real proposals, with broad democratic support. But to get any of this stuff passed, it will likely require input and support from Republicans. And unfortunately, I have little to no faith that they will come to the table on this. I hope I am wrong. [1] https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/ https://joebiden.com/clean-energy/

Pxtl 6y ago

Well, considering the Texan senator who is currently planning his return from Cancun was involved in spreading lies that ultimately led to an attempted insurrection against the US government... I think people are a little sick of Texas politics right now, and Texas losing power on large scale for a major weather event for the 2nd time in four years is a nice reminder of the local attitudes about climate change and the failures of Texan libertarianism.